Regional Small Presses are Greensboro Bound

As part of our inaugural festivities, Greensboro Bound will spotlight five vibrant regional small presses.

You’ll have a chance to meet both the publishers and authors contributing to

the energetic publishing environment of North and South Carolina.

Blair is a new, nonprofit press combining the lists of Carolina Wren Press and John F. Blair, Publisher. They strive to publish quality writing, focusing on authors and subjects historically neglected by mainstream publishers, including women, people of color, authors with disabilities, and LGBT authors. True to their roots in North Carolina, they look to the many voices of the South–and beyond–as sources of work and inspiration. Their most recent publication is the novel Beaut by Donald Morrill.

The Blair Publishing panel will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 4:30 pm in the Nussbaum Room of the Central Library. It will feature publisher Lynn York and authors Quinn Dalton, Jeremy B. Jones, Sara Ficke, Erick Myers, and John Francis Trump.

Bull City Press was born in 2006. They currently publish a small quarterly magazine, Inch, and poetry chapbooks through the Frost Place Chapbook Competition. In 2015, they launched a line of fiction and nonfiction chapbooks when we merged with Origami Zoo Press. One of their most recent titles is Michael Parker’s Everything, Then and Since.

The Bull City Press panel will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 11:15 am in the Nussbaum Room of the Central Library. It will feature Associate Editor Julia Ridley Smith and authors Ellen Bush, Michael McFee, and Emilia Philips.

Founded in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1995, Hub City Press has emerged as the South’s premier independent literary press. Focused on finding and spotlighting new and extraordinary voices from the American South, the press has published over eighty high-caliber literary works, including novels, short stories, poetry, memoir, and books emphasizing the region’s culture and history. One of their most recent books is Whiskey and Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith, who will be appearing at the festival.

The Hub City panel will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 2:00 pm in the Nussbaum Room of the Central Library. This panel will feature authors Leesa Cross-Smith, Scott Gould, and Thomas McConnell.

Press 53 is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and has been finding and sharing remarkable voices since October 2005. They have earned a reputation as a quality publishing house of short fiction and poetry collections. Press 53 celebrates its 200th title with the publication of NC Poet Laureate Shelby Dean Stephenson’s Our World.

The Press 53 panel will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 3:15 pm in the Nussbaum Room of the Central Library. It will feature publisher Kevin Watson and authors Maura Way, Ray Morrison, Gabrielle Brant Freeman, and Joe Mills.

Unicorn Press was founded in 1966 in Santa Barbara, CA, and in 1972 it moved to Greensboro, NC. By then, it was the sole responsibility of Al Brilliant, who had founded the press along with Jack Shoemaker. Believing that readers should spend at least as much time reading a poem as the poet did writing it, Unicorn has produced poetry in every form: post cards to books: poems as individuals. Today, the press focuses on handbound chapbooks and smaller cohesive sheaves of poetry. Their most recent publication is DAY KINK by Tristan Allen Jih & Adam Vines.

The Unicorn Press panel will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 10:00 am in the Nussbaum Room of the Central Library. It will feature publisher Andrew Saulters and poets Amy Wright, Mark Smith-Soto, and Charlotte Matthews.